Getinge

Getinge replaces their legacy field service solution with eCraft Fabric

Summary

Getinge used eCraft Fabric to replace a legacy solution for field service. Read about the process of discovering the right solution and how it was implemented step-by-step to arrive at a user-oriented application for a highly mobile work force of field technicians.

Topics

Field Service

Mobile

Replace Legacy Systems

“This is the most user-friendly business application implementation I’ve ever been part of.”

— Rob DiMarco, Finance Project Manager

Key Achievements

Real-time visibility on the status of every ongoing job for regional managers and the back office.

A highly mobile workforce of 400+ service technicians across the US

Technicians can easily manage every aspect of service reports, from job creation to collecting signatures for completed work

Access to KPI:s and measurements of the service operation end-to-end

From a small town in Sweden to hospitals all over the world

Today Getinge is a leading global provider of medical devices and services for the healthcare and life sciences, but their beginnings were a lot more humble. They started out in 1904 in the small town of Getinge, Sweden as a manufacturer of agricultural equipment. In 1932, they began their transformation into the life sciences by starting to manufacture sterilizers for medical equipment, thus signaling their transition into medical devices. Getinge now employs more than 15,500 employees in 44 countries, with 29.8 billion SEK in revenue in 2016. In the US Getinge has 1000 employees including more than 400 service technicians working in the field.

Because of the prominent role their products play in the healthcare sector, and because service is an important business segment for Getinge, it is critical that they have effective processes and tools in place for running the service business. In the US Getinge was using an aging solution based on Lotus Notes that did not support the processes and had severe technical limitations. It was slow and difficult to use, requiring a very reliable data connection and long wait times for information to flow back and forth when in the field. Technicians also had to use laptops connected to mobile printers and signature pads.

This limited mobility in practice, and also resulted in bad data quality. Because some information could not be be communicated through the system and had to be handled via phone and other methods, manual corrections were common. For a business where traceability and reliability of information is critical this was not acceptable.

Getinge USA recognized that a new system was needed to ensure that each party involved in the process would have clear insight into the service business. Getinge was also using an old version of M3/Movex that this new solution would have to work together with.

Designing the right process together

Getinge decided to turn to eCraft who they had collaborated with for several years on other projects. eCraft Fabric is an extension of the tools provided by Infor, that enables real-time advanced user experiences and processes on top of M3/Movex with a great look and feel.

To find out how the solution should align with the existing process, and to find areas where the process or the tool needed to be optimized, Getinge and eCraft used the Value Stream Mapping technique. In a series of workshops, the steps of the process were visualized and analyzed and interactions with the tool were mapped out. We looked at which things could be streamlined, prioritized and split up into manageable parts so the first set of usable functionality could be practiced right away. Then, later, additional features could be added over time. In parallel, a series of sketches for the user interface were created so that future users could get a feeling for what it would be like working with the solution right from the start.

Once a reliable overview existed, the solution was developed using an agile process. eCraft and Getinge worked closely together to design a series of iterative releases that Getinge personnel were heavily involved in testing and giving feedback on. When the core features were put in place and there was enough functionality for the technicians to perform their key operations they were all given iPads and the system was taken into use.

After the go-live, development of the system and process continued with periodic releases that added more functionality that simplified the day to day tasks for the field personnel.

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We are eCraft. We help you develop effective, efficient and competitive business processes. Your users, regardless if they are employees, customers or partners, get modern consumer-grade user experiences while management retains control and visibility into the processes.

We achieve this through a combination of expertise in cutting-edge IT technology and a deep understanding of businesses and their processes.